Public-private partnership in the reality of the global COVID-19 societal crisis

Abstract

COVID-19 generated a societal crisis, which manifests itself in the fact that ordinary people are forced to revise their individual values in connection with the coronavirus pandemic and state the fact of their discrepancies with the priorities of the state and with the prevailing values in society. At the same time, the destruction of societal integrity necessitates a restructuring of the relationship between the state, society, business and households, taking into account fundamental changes in the consciousness of society and in people's assessments of the quality of the state's performance of the functions imputed to it by society. Before COVID-19 the priority of functions and fiscal preferences of the state was determined in accordance with the three main groups, according to R. Musgrave. COVID-19 made serious adjustments to the priority of state obligations to society, reducing them to two: improving the epidemiological situation in the country and timely reopening economic activities. These sharp changes were expressed in the emergence of the term “epinomics”, combining the two main goals of the states’ strategies for fighting the coronavirus. Adequate forms of organizing public-private partnerships make it possible to optimize the combination of strategic goals of the state and tools for their budget funding. And this, in turn, lets it possible to advance further in resolving the global societal crisis in the post-COVID-19 pandemics future.